Units

The following units are important in Factorio.

Power

Power is defined as work being done per unit of time.

Watt (W)

The basic unit of power is 1 watt (W), which is defined as 1W = 1J / 1s, ie. one Joule of work being done every second.

The game commonly deals with larger units, namely kilowatts (kW) and megawatts (MW).

Lamps use 5kW while turned on. A Radar uses 300kW while active - equivalent to 60 lamps. One Steam engine is capable of outputting 510W.

Work

Work is defined as a transfer of energy, or as energy being "spent".

Joule (J)

The basic unit of work is 1 joule (J), and represents the work being done (total energy transferred) by a power of one watt applied for one second: 1J = 1W * 1s.

In-game, every piece of coal burned will produce 8kJ. One Accumulator is capable of storing 5MJ.

Time

Second (s)

One second in-game. This is not guaranteed to correspond to one real second. For example, slow computers may not manage to calculate an entire tick during the corresponding real time frame of 1/60th of a second.

Day

A day has 25000 Game-ticks or 416.66 game-seconds (= 6.94 Game-minutes).

This is the cycle (realtively speaking)

0.75 -> 0.25 (half a day), 100% bright          - 208.33 secs
0.25 -> 0.45 getting dark (evening)             - 83.33 secs
0.45 -> 0.55 night                              - 41.66 secs
0.55 -> 0.75 get light (morning)                - 83.33 secs

  ------------- day -------><--- evening ------><-night-><----- morning -----><-------- day -----------
  
% 0    5    10   15   20   25   30   35   40   45   50   55   60   65   70   75   80   85   90   95  100
  |----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|

Distance

Tile

The Tile is both used as a unit of distance/length and a unit of area. For example, the size of an object may be expressed as "2x2 tiles", which means the object covers an area of 4 square tiles or tiles². The unit of square tiles is often simplified into Tiles. It can be assumed, that a tile has the length of 1 meter.

Chunk

A Chunk is a quadratic area where one side is 32 tiles long. (1024 square tiles)