Am I a dotard in regards to the purpose of Power Shards?

[Me]

Assuming construction resources and space are unlimited, power shards should never be used, correct?

If true, I've been wondering about why are they are in the game at all. The game design presets power slugs as something special to obtain, like a hidden treasure. But the actual use of them in your factory will make it less efficient overall.
I feel like I'm missing something obvious here but I'm just not seeing it.

[Blastroid]

Use them in miners and power creation machines only.

[vitriol17]

Your miners are a limiting factor in how much you can produce, as there are only limited resource nodes. Overclocking them is almost always good.
You can just build more stuff, but often i find just sticking a module on overclock is the easiest way to improve something quickly.

[VeraelHasta]

I use them in 2 cases:
1. To overclock miners if I need to
2. To overclock machines with odd required resources. Like machine produces 12 per second and I need 10 - easier to plop overclock than add another constructor to the chain.

[Sono]

Your producers are your limiting factor in how much you can produce.Even on resource scarcity maps, resources are over abundant.

The purpose of the shards, imo, is to trade more power consumption to virtually build more machines in the place of one.Once you have coal power, you'll almost never have power problems again. Unless you have been lazy.

Put the shard in a machine and it increases the output by some factor. This essentially lets you build more machines, without taking up more space, or setting up new logistics lines for new machines.

A machine with 3 shards in it produces 250% it's normal quantity, and uses as many more times material to do so. The idea is to use them to squeeze more production out of every inch of your existing infrastructure, instead of setting up new stuff.

They also work very well in machines that generate power, yes.

[Me]

Originally posted by Blastroid:

Use them in miners and power creation machines only.

This seems to make the most sense to me, thank you.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Also you use them for optimization in the game. If you use power shards to overclock your machines you'll need less physical machines to do the same thing and then when you get to late game your factories will be smaller and you'll be playing the game at (estimated here not actual information) 40 FPS vs 20 FPS for example.

[Kortak]

Originally posted by Ysonoko:

Your producers are your limiting factor in how much you can produce.Even on resource scarcity maps, resources are over abundant.

The purpose of the shards, imo, is to trade more power consumption to virtually build more machines in the place of one.Once you have coal power, you'll almost never have power problems again. Unless you have been lazy.

Put the shard in a machine and it increases the output by some factor. This essentially lets you build more machines, without taking up more space, or setting up new logistics lines for new machines.

A machine with 3 shards in it produces 250% it's normal quantity, and uses as many more times material to do so. The idea is to use them to squeeze more production out of every inch of your existing infrastructure, instead of setting up new stuff.

They also work very well in machines that generate power, yes.

no power problems with coal is only when you have small factories..when you grow bigger soon your coal power wont be enough

[DrNewcenstein]

Power Shards also compensate somewhat for node purity, or lack thereof. You can boost the output of a miner on an Impure node to get it closer to Normal node output levels, and boost a Normal node closer to Pure node levels. You can also use them to make Pure nodes put out enough to feed multiple destinations, compensate for long distances, and to refill truck stations more quickly, which comes in handy when you're running multiple 48-capacity Trucks out of one station (to deliver coal, for example, to multiple/distant generators, bomb factories, or aluminum refineries).

If you're feeding a certain machine like a Manufacturer out of filled containers instead of from production lines, then 3 power shards will let it run at max capacity with no wait time for resources, as long as you refill the containers before they empty.

You can also use them to boost the output of Water and Oil Extractors, at least in their startup stage, so their fluids reach their destinations more quickly. If you're pumping water to a group of coal generators, and they're all overclocked with 3 shards each, you'll want to keep those water extractors pumping enough water to keep them running. It's ok if the extractor runs constantly, so long as it can fulfill the water needs. If the extractor's indicator drops below 60%, you need to boost it further, or add another one and have them feed a main pipe that distributes to multiple generators.

A single oil node can feed 4 overclocked refineries - 2 producing fuel for generators and 2 producing rubber and plastic plus Heavy Oil Residue for other purposes - if it is overclocked, even across very long pipelines.
Unless they broke that with another update again and long pipeline effectiveness is greatly reduced.

[tulle040657]

I use them so I can use just 1 water extractor for 4 coal plants instead of 1.5 water extractors

[OzHawkeye]

Originally posted by Kortak:

Just how much power do you need? I can get 15 or more GW of power out of just 3 coal nodes, I could easily hook up more coal nodes to my power station as well.

[Atomizer]

Originally posted by DrNewcenstein:

Power Shards also compensate somewhat for node purity, or lack thereof. You can boost the output of a miner on an Impure node to get it closer to Normal node output levels, and boost a Normal node closer to Pure node levels. You can also use them to make Pure nodes put out enough to feed multiple destinations, compensate for long distances, and to refill truck stations more quickly, which comes in handy when you're running multiple 48-capacity Trucks out of one station (to deliver coal, for example, to multiple/distant generators, bomb factories, or aluminum refineries).

The same as or more*
You can overclock to 250%, and then with Mk 2 miners the base rate is doubled, so Mk 2 + overclocking can get an impure node producing more then a non-overclocked Mk1 mine on a pure node....but obviously then if you put a Mk 2 miner and overclock it on a pure node you can get over 480 per minute.

I know you probably already knew this, but since you only said "get it closer", I wanted to clarify for those who didn't know.

[|||||||||||]

Originally posted by Maschinenkanone:

I've been wondering about why are they are in the game at all.

Probably, one of the better examples would be oil production. Oil is more of a rare type of resource and on top of that its a liquid so you are also dealing with flow and head lift and all of that, not to mention the oil infrastracture tends to be rather huge and sometimes complicated.

See, as of now pipes are limited to transport 300 cubic meters of liquid. Oil extractor on a rich oil node produces 240, which is not enough to fully load one pipeline. Bump it up by 25% with a slug and you get exactly 300 cubes.

Oil extractor on a normal node produces 120 cubes of oil. You either merge two normal extractors into one pipe and still not make 300 cubes for it to fully utilize said pipe. Or you overclock each normal extrator by 250% and get 300 cubes production on each, so you can have two more fully loaded pipelines coming in to your refinery station.

Is it worth power-wise? It depends. I prefer to overclock existing oil and have more refinery production in one place rather than messing around looking for / building / routing new oil nodes. Also by having less Extractors you are saving up on the number of pipeline pumps (if you use them) which saves 4MW each. So its a game of numbers too.

In the end, can you live without ever touching a single slug? Absolutely. Its just an adjustment tool that is somewhat special to obtain, but rather trivial to use.

[Shimarin <Pomf>]

To re-iterate what some others have touched upon: They're good for tweaking output rather than having to complicate production by adding more equipment to the line, or having certain parts sitting idle whether waiting on resources or sitting idle after backing up the next machine. They are the grease for squeaky wheels, as it were. They're also great for short-term boosts to production of certain bottleneck resources rather than having everything else waiting on you setting up a new line.

[Me]

Originally posted by |||||||||||:

as of now pipes are limited to transport 300 cubic meters of liquid. Oil extractor on a rich oil node produces 240, which is not enough to fully load one pipeline. Bump it up by 25% with a slug and you get exactly 300 cubes.

Great example.

Lots of useful information here, thank you to everyone for the suggestions. I knew there had to be a better use for them I just wasn't seeing it. I was focused on manufactured items and didn't really consider power & extracted resources.

[Sono]

Originally posted by Kortak:

no power problems with coal is only when you have small factories..when you grow bigger soon your coal power wont be enough

I get all the way into tier 7 with nothing but coal power, and 1 or 2 fuel generators to burn off excess byproducts in the mid game. Coal is easily the best power in the game. One water turbine feeds 3 coal generators pumping out 187.5 MW each with power shards. They use virtually no coal to run. Even with just 6 coal generators you could easily sail into the mid/late game.

Even if you were running a big boy factory, coal scales very nicely with space to power ratio. If you're limiting yourself to a 4x4 grid factory, yeah... You're gonna have power problems.