Actual length of game night?

[Rahjital]

On this page, the wiki says the game night (ie the time when solar panels generate no power) is 66.5 seconds long. However, I just measured it with a stopwatch and got a result of somewhere around 40 seconds, not 66.5 seconds. It's not a problem of the game running too fast, as machines idly draining 20kW took around 800kJ from accumulators during the night. I tried searching a bit but couldn't find anything useful. Does anyone know the actual duration of night in the game?

[Koub]

I just measured with my stopwatch, and these are the values I have measured (quite approximative, I'm aware of it) :

Code: Select all

phase   stopwatch duration (mm:ss)	duration(sec)
dusk      01:27       01:27               87
night     02:04       00:37               37
dawn      03:33       01:29               89
day       06:57       03:24               204

Couldn't find anything in a changelog about that change.

[Edit] : Test ran under 0.11.14, with a pretty small factory, and with a quite decent gaming rig, continuously at 60 fps, I'm sure it's not a performance issue.
The day cycle is about the same length (417ish), but dawn and dusk are longer, and full night shorter than the ones reported on the wiki, while full day is about the same.

[Edit 2] : I measured with an autonomous electrical network composed of 1 solar panel (60 kW),a pumpjack (90 kW needed), and a tank for the oil (to ensure the pumpjack always asks for 90 kW). Like that, 100% of the solar panel output is always used, and at the second it produces less than 60kW, I see it.

[Rahjital]

Our results match then, and if wiki is right and it wasn't so in 0.11.8, it's either an undocumented change or a bug. Time to where devs will file the report.

[sillyfly]

IIRC the complete day/night cycle used to be approx. 10 minutes. According to your measurements it is more like 7 minutes, so it seems like the whole cycle has been shortened? Or was it always only 7 minutes long?

[Rahjital]

After some schooling from Rseding, it seems the wiki was wrong. The day-night cycle is 7 minutes long and night is 41 seconds long, and it has been this way for at least a year.

[dee-]

If anyone feels tempted, the old Factorio versions can still be downloaded (down to 0.6) to make timing measurements

[Koub]

Added the method I used to measure the day/night cycle in my initial post.
My guess is that the method used to time what's written in the wiki had a flaw : if your solar panels produce more than your factory needs, you don't start to see the lowering of power produced by solar before you underproduce energy.
Example : if your factory consumes 100 MW but you have enough solar panels to produce 300 MW, you'll see night begin when you're 66% into dusk or 33% into dawn.