Overclockers: A case study

    So, I spent a bit of time tonight messing around with overclockers, and here's what I found out.


    First of all, for point of reference, a fully heated induction furnace processes a full stack of resources in approximately 42 seconds, drawing 16 EU/t during the operation, for a total energy consumption of about 13.5k EU. This is my basis of comparison, since the point of this is to determine whether or not overclockers are "worth it" over advanced machines at any point.


    Now, an electric furnace running off of 4 overclockers has roughly the same draw as an induction furnace, but processes much, much slower. As in, slow enough that I didn't even bother clocking the time needed to complete a stack, it's obviously much less efficient than an induction furnace. A fifth overclocker draws more energy than an induction furnace, and still processes slower. A sixth requires a transformer upgrade, because it's now drawing 34 EU/t to operate, but has roughly the same speed as an induction furnace. It is, however, much less efficient, requiring double the energy draw of it's advanced counterpart. Adding more overclockers will trade energy efficiency for speed, and will surpass the speed of an induction furnace.


    Now, it does need to be said that the induction furnace can process two stacks at once, and thus, it's efficiency is effectively doubled, meaning it only really takes about 6.75k EU to process one full stack (split it across the two slots in the induction furnace, and it takes 21 seconds to process instead of 42). However, it is limited at this, whereas you can keep putting more and more overclockers into an electric furnace.


    This is where overclockers start to shine. It doesn't really show too much until you've hit your second transformer upgrade, and your 10th overclocker. This causes the machine to draw 170 EU/t, but to take only 10 seconds to process a full stack. It does cost 34k EU to do it, but you're trading 5x the energy to process twice as fast. The 11th overclocker drops the processing time to 6 seconds, but raises the energy cost to 260 EU/t...three times as fast, at 4.5x the cost. The 12th is the magic bullet, 370 EU/t, but only 3.5x to process a full stack. Six times as fast, 26k total EU consumed, only about 4x the cost in total EU, so you've hit a point where the electric furnace really shines with 12 overclockers. 13 overclockers won't even run unless you have an energy storage upgrade in it, draws 512 EU/t (plus probably some from the internal buffer), and still takes 3 seconds to process, so the 13th is a major downstep.


    The true point of comparison is induction furnace vs. electric with 12 upgrades. Induction takes 21 seconds per stack processing time, 6750 EU to process, whereas electric Ux12 takes 3.5 seconds but 26k EU. I would say that, given the fact that charcoal is easy to come by and lava produces 20k EU per bucket, if you're running the equipment for long periods of constant operation, like an automated smelting line, induction is the way to go. Slower, but steady, low energy consumption for when speed isn't of the essence. If you're doing on-demand operations, electric Ux12 is definitely the way to go. Yes, you burn up more energy processing it...but you process it FAST, meaning you spend less time standing around waiting for machines to finish processing your materials, and more time using them. And time is a lot more valuable than a couple of extra pieces of charcoal worth of energy.


    Now that I've taken the time to type all of this out, I really, really hope I didn't miscalculate somewhere or otherwise make a total ass of myself, lol :D

    Nope, you are quite right.


    Using 17 overclockers makes most machines run a cycle in one tick. This is not that usefull for a furnace, but nice for compressor and macerator. This takes about 2000 EU/t (so you need 4 MFSU to power the machine^^), but only on tick per item. So since the macerator uses 625 EU normally (maybe even 30% more, no idea), it's only 3 times as expensive. But you would need some storage-upgrades if you don't want to power every machine used this way with 4 MFSU.

    Quote


    - Increase default operation length for simple el. machines by 30%


    Since I guess the wiki-data refers to the old numbers increasing the operation length by 30% while keeping the EU/t ratio should increase the energy per cycle by 30% meaning Macerator and Compressor need 813 EU not 625, which makes the 17 overclockers even more interesting.

    Quote from Bluehorazon

    Nope, you are quite right.


    Using 17 overclockers makes most machines run a cycle in one tick. This is not that usefull for a furnace, but nice for compressor and macerator. This takes about 2000 EU/t (so you need 4 MFSU to power the machine^^), but only on tick per item. So since the macerator uses 625 EU normally (maybe even 30% more, no idea), it's only 3 times as expensive. But you would need some storage-upgrades if you don't want to power every machine used this way with 4 MFSU.


    Since I guess the wiki-data refers to the old numbers increasing the operation length by 30% while keeping the EU/t ratio should increase the energy per cycle by 30% meaning Macerator and Compressor need 813 EU not 625, which makes the 17 overclockers even more interesting.

    Macerator still works on redstone. Macerator before required 1 redstone to process 1 item. Macerator now does the same. One redstone put to batbox provides 500EU. How is that possible ?

    I was actually going to do all of this research myself, as I was quite curious. Luckily, I don't have to now. I'll probably still use my induction furnace for regular smelting needs, but keep an electric furnace with 12 overclockers ready to go if I ever need mass smelting done.

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    Quote from sirbrandino

    I was actually going to do all of this research myself, as I was quite curious. Luckily, I don't have to now. I'll probably still use my induction furnace for regular smelting needs, but keep an electric furnace with 12 overclockers ready to go if I ever need mass smelting done.


    I use a 17 overclockers Macerator for bronze, since I melt everything into ingots I have to macerate the ingots to get bronze. But you need 4 MFSU, I guess there is a bug where it macerates the items even if it is impossible to provide enough energy for them. A Macerator with 17 Overclockers should never run using a badbox. It has 625 EU-Storage and gets 32EU/t, but need almost 2000 EU/t. Still it macerates items.


    So maybe this is way it sometimes seems to not consume more energy. But I need to do more testing on this, but I encountered some strange things with OCs. Try putting 7 inside a macerator. You should train 34 EU/t slowly emptying the storage of the Macerator but it doesn't seem to get emtpy.

    Quote from FenixR

    The machines will keep working as long as you provide them with power. If you dont provide them with the constant energy they need, they will simply not work at maximum potency.


    Thats why transformers and energy storage upgrades exist.


    I know. But if a macerator needs 2000 EU/t, it should be able to get 2000 EU/t. With a storage of 625 and an Input of 32 EU/t the macerator should never ever macerate a single item. It's just not possible for it to get 2000 EU/t the maximum is 625 + 32 = 657 EU/t. It would need 4 Ticks until the macerator could smelt an item, but since he should not be able to work for a quarter of a tick it should not do anything, but still it does macerate items, I need to test this a little bit more since there might be another reason why it macerates stuff.

    What Fenix said. While yes you can say that it should be able to get 2000EU/t, it is not how it is designed, so that argument is moot (i.e. irrelevant)


    I must only assume that (without huge effort) the machines were not meant to recieve 2000EU/t and thus storage cells come into play. considering that each storage upgrade gives 10k, 64 gives 640,000EUs worth of storage. Roughly 320 operations before it runs out, and that is ignoring recharging from lets say a 512EU/t MFSU. By the time the first 320 blocks are done, 163800EUs or so have been flown in giving another 80 operations. And so on and so on.


    If you really want your system to run for that long without break, you are going to have to set up some substantial supply systems using rp2 or BC.


    ALSO, if you are trying to do this to a macerator, don't forget that you are wasting a heap of energy, I haven't calculated it but It is probably better just to use that energy to feed into your mass fab. 16k to make one piece of scrap does not efficiency make. (16k*34=544,000EUs used just to speed up one UU-m), thus ending up with uu-matter costing a total of 710,000EUs, rather than the much closer to 166,666Eu cost if you used more macerators at a slower speed. Looks like I have done the calculations now. :)


    @Bluehorazon. Machines will stop, and cancel their progress when there is no power. As there is still power coming in the progress continues, albeit at the speed that the power allows.

    Hell, prove me wrong, Happy to be so 99% of the time, then I can learn stuff :)

    Quote from Zudguard

    @Bluehorazon. Machines will stop, and cancel their progress when there is no power. As there is still power coming in the progress continues, albeit at the speed that the power allows.


    Yeah, I would understand this, if the process would take more then one tick. But it doesn't. And it doesn't even consume the correct amount of energy. Since one tick is the smallest avaible unit of time how could a process only work for half a tick?

    As far as I know when my macerator/other machine needs more power than is provided, it does take longer. taking a little break from mc so i won't be testing this, but that is my understanding. not sure why your operations are still taking less than a tick even with limited power.

    Hell, prove me wrong, Happy to be so 99% of the time, then I can learn stuff :)

    based on the info on the wiki about oc upgrades i set out to figure it out for myself and this is what i've come up with:


    the equation for figuring out the EU/t should be like this EU*(1.5^X) where X is the number of OC upgrades you have, at 20 this seems to break down and the machine uses far more energy than 6650EU/t (i'm feeind close to 10k EU/t into a maserator and its not working)


    with transformer upgrades the machine will pull packets of 32, 128, or 512 depending on how many upgrades you have and how much it needs to refill its internal buffer. meaning that if you have to many OC upgrades (say 16) and only 32EU/t it will operate at a speed equal to how long it takes 32EU/t to fill up the required EU for the job (42 and 1/2 seconds according to my math, 1364EU)


    i'm suspecting that at 20 upgrades you would need to imput EU/t equal to the entire job size per tick to make it run at full speed somthing like i'm not even sure becasue pumping 10k EU/t into a maserator with 2 transformer upgrades 64 storage upgrades and 20 overclocker upgrades still causes it to drop way way down in speed wilse still consuming 10k eu/t. thus i can only conclude that OC upgrades work like Overclocking does in real life, causing the machine its preformed on to become unpredictable.

    Yeah, I was just getting confused with the wiki information on OverClockers as well... cos, things don't seem to add up.
    I took a peek and it seems the wiki has the formula wrong it's EU/t * (1.6^x) where x = number of overclockers. [not 1.5^x] [[Apparently it changed going from IC 1.64 to 1.70]]


    Which would explain your conclusion, that a machine instead of needing 6651 EU/t (with 20 overclockers) would require 24,179 EU/t to run continually. [apparently the difference between 1.5 and 1.6 is big, then again it's 60% more instead of 50% more *shrugs*]



    *reworks the math* I'm not sure who came up with 20, but it seems like you only need 16 or 17 overclockers to make a standard machine (macerator/extractor/compressor) run at the 1 operation/tick maximum speed. [which would require only 3689 or 5903 EU/t to run continually] ... then again I'm tired so my maths could be wrong. [[13 or 14 overclockers to max an electric furnace @ 1351 or 2162 EU/t.... 10 or 11 for a recycler (111 or 176 EU/t) ]] -- Re-edit: I'm pretty sure the lower number of overclockers is correct. [16, 13 and 10 respectively]