Feature request: Button to limit overclock in multis

[Doniazade]

The issue: Optimizing parallel machines for power efficiency

Running in parallel is more energy efficient than overclocking because you're running the recipes at a lower overclock. Using the same energy to run a smaller number of recipes at higher overclock is more wasteful.

A machine will run as soon as it can run a single recipe. This means that if the input is a trickle the machine will sit there constantly running at a higher oc but lower parallel. This is especially relevant for passive machines with constant inflow like fractionating distilleries, large electrolyzers, centrifuges etc.

To combat this players use larger patterns, supply exact and other shenanigans to ensure that the machine runs at maximum parallel. I've done Nomi CEu hard mode with no source and I had to do this a lot, it gets very tedious. If you're in a power limited late-endgame then you end up doing a lot of this to reduce power consumption. It really is not fun at all.

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There is, however, a much, much easier solution.

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Just add a button where you can limit the maximum overclock of the machine, like on singleblock machines in gtceu.

This saves an enormous amount of work for those who need to power optimize their parallel setups, and is entirely optional since the button would do nothing by default like on singles. It might also occasionally have other applications. By selecting the appropriate voltage limit the player can maintain efficiency even if the input rate isn't always fast enough for full parallel.

More complex variation/addition

Have a button that explicitly makes every recipe always run at the same voltage it would at the highest possible parallel in the machine. Since recipes have different voltages this will be a different voltage for each recipe and this would allow for more nuanced optimization of machines with mixed voltage inputs.

This variation may or may not be the best solution for every situation. This is because a machine might have both recipes that it will actually get enough ingredients for to run at max parallel but also ingredients that will never be run in batches large enough. In this case a voltage cap is more appropriate. So my suggestion is to add both if possible, but if only one is added then it should be simple voltage capping since it's easiest to understand and relevant to the most machines.

[WhitePr]

Are you looking for "Voltage Control Unit"
This is the only option in this mod, enabling it will turn on "Voltage Control"
But there is no recipe in nomi-ceu

[Doniazade]

That's really helpful, thank you. I'll take it to nomi-ceu.