I figured the efficiency settings already affected the fuel consumption rather than the output. As far as "balancing", it actually seems a bit more realistic to me for it to be a tradeoff, where one would choose two of the following three attributes for a power generation setup: compact, fast, efficient.
They probably do, that's what makes it silly. There's no need to slap on repeated layers of efficiency. Just have input/output and have done.
You make a good point about realism. The problem isn't actually realism too much, more game design. When we talk about flavours of machines (different types of macerators for instance) there's two ways you can "grow". You can grow progressively (where you accomplish higher tiers of technology via aluminium, stainless steel, etc) or laterally (adding addons to a machine to make it do different things)
The problem is that GT sort of gets the two mixed up. Greg tries to combine the notion of higher technology with overclocking, but they're two different concepts. In game design, a progression-based change should always meet the criteria "better is better." If you *earn* stainless steel technology via a tech tree, it should be *better* than what came before it. Conversely if you *choose* to add addons to an existing machine (overclocks) that *can* justifiably be a balanced change.
Right now an advanced macerator is just an overclocked macerator. The pros (faster, smaller space, fewer lossy eu-connections) are offset by the costs (inefficient energy consumption).
A better design (ahem, one that makes money in gaming) is that an advanced macerator is equal to or better than the basic macerator in every way. That does not mean triple productivity over and over again. It could be that each machine only increases speed by 20% or something. But this is something that everyone wants.
To have his cake and eat it too, Greg (or blood asp!) could add back overclockers as a feature. These are lateral-improvements. It absolutely makes sense for these to increase the output rate of a machine at some cost (efficiency or resources or space or whatever)
Huh, a space-based lateral overclocker...that would be so amazing if you had the option to plonk a 4 block-multiblock attachment to a macerator to increase its production speed by 25% and no efficiency degradation.