What is the point of power shards now ?

[Ragnaman]

I remember they were useful in power gen buildings before as they increased efficiency, but now it seems like its just linear scaling and coal power plants consume as much resources as it generates extra power.

[Wolfgang]

You never saved on fuel when overclocking power generators. The fuel consumption : power production was always linear. The interface was just exponential and the target MW was, unless when running at 100%, never what the generator actually produced in power.

[Troy_Mc_Lure]

the real use of power shards always was (and still is) increasing the output of your limited ressources.
lets say you want to upgrade your copper factory, but there ain`t more copper ressource points nearby... just overclock those miners.
the previous state of the game made this point even more clear, because overclocking production machines just wasn`t worth it on the exponential power scale.

for power though... well.. a single overclocked oil extractor supplied my game with all the electrical power i needed for the complete playthrough.

[Finaldest]

Brilliant for overclocking MK1 miners while waiting for MK2 to be unlocked or to make better use of lower yield mining pads.

[Huren Ogeko]

Just overclock all the miners...overclocking anything else only serves to save space and space is your most abundant resources. But there is a limited number of nodes so overclocking the miners is make sense as you get more bang for your buck on each node assuming power is not at a critical level. so I would hold off doing this until you get coal unlocked.

[Vectorspace]

Players doing epic sized production rates like ImKibitz overclock production buildings so their factories are not so large as to cause lag or hit the build limit.

Maybe you have designed a beautifully factory building but it turns out to be slightly too small, or you want to expand an existing factory but it is hemmed in by terrain, so you overclock rather than redesign.

[Huren Ogeko]

well luckily most of us are sane and wont need to do crazy things like you see on some youtube channels.

but if that is your thing then got for it...then post screenshots here

[Veeshan]

I use them to make things match, primarily. Use 10 machines instead of 10.6, etc. I've never come close to running out of something* (just go seize another node) so boosting rates is just for fun. Also they're handy to speed up the "oops I forgot to grab X" crafting when out away from supplies.

*Cept for Sulfur now that I'm playing with Turbo Fuel

[Huren Ogeko]

I dont worry much about running out of things but if I can make 2.5x larger factory from a single node that is less factories I need to construct. I do it more for that then anything else. I get more crap out of a single node if I max the output of the node. So i always overclock the miner but rarely overclock the constructor. I tend more to under clock them and add one extra to the end when I need to balance production.

[EntreNous]

I only use shards to maximize resource extraction, or occasionally to balance a production line.

[luntacarsus]

You can also use them to make the numbers nicer. For example the Heavy Encased Frame alternate uses stupid numbers of 7.5, 9.375, 33.75 and 20.625 to make 2.8125 per minute. Overclock to a measly 106.67% and you get nice round numbers of 8, 10, 36 and 22 to make 3 per minute.

[nfgman]

Never been a shortage of slugs. When upgrade 5 (or was it 6) respawned a lot of slugs, there was abundance. Used thousands and still thousands left over. Power, even as a byproduct, is not an issue in late game and I use power shards casually.

[Huren Ogeko]

Originally posted by luntacarsus:

You can also use them to make the numbers nicer. For example the Heavy Encased Frame alternate uses stupid numbers of 7.5, 9.375, 33.75 and 20.625 to make 2.8125 per minute. Overclock to a measly 106.67% and you get nice round numbers of 8, 10, 36 and 22 to make 3 per minute.

I tend to underclock to make numbers nicer but that is a good reason. I guess it depends on how close it is.

[Ragnaman]

I see, thanks, yeah, i was thinking along similar lines. Miners and tweaking performance in the production chain as necessary, but was wondering maybe im missing something.

[Huren Ogeko]

overclocking the miners are never a bad idea.

[Illuminia]

Another good use partially mentioned in the thread - scaling Up (production) without scaling Out (factory space).

Miners scale up naturally with upgrades - MK1 -> MK2 -> MK3.
What good overclocking a miner do if the factory attached to that Miner was designed to utilize near 100% of the MK1's output?

Sure, you could massively expand the factory, or split off the ore and build a new factory to produce other things (or a 2nd reinforced iron plate factory) ...
Or you can just overclock the heck out of the original factory to match the upgraded Miner.

I spent too much time designing factory/building/walls/roofs to want to build a 2nd; but didn't want to build another. So at the cost of a few dozen shards and extra power (which was no issue by that point); saved me the time of building another factory.


TLDR: Overclocking saves space & player's time at cost of power use.

Amazing for Miners.
Very Good for Power Generation *(if resources are not already fully tapped).
Useful for retrofitting/upgrading an existing factory.
Situationally Useful to save space or make output/min match weird targets; at player's discretion.