Factorio Forums

It has been bothering me for some time, but should not be fuel value in MWh?

fuel has energy value in MJ, i understand that generators energy production (generators) output is in MW, but boiler consumption is for some reason in MW, although fuel value is in MJ. and seem to me that translation between MJ and boiler consumption is incorrect (mind 1MJ is roughly 0.00028MWh. with current length of factorio day, and assuming 24hr day, boiler at 50% usage witll burn trough solid fuel cube in less than 1sec.

to produce 1MWh, you will need roughly 4000 MJ worth fuel eg. in 20 sec (roughly 1 hr in factorio time), you will need to feed boiler 160 cubes of solid fuel, and that is assuming 100% (eg. lossless) utilization.

So there is either mistake in boiler consumption units, but then you will have literal perpetuum mobile (3.8MJ will translate into 0.0014MW intake, and production of steam worth of 3.6MW of energy - 1 boiler can feed 2 generators, but has only 50% effectivity)
Or fuel value is not MJ, but MWh. othewise fuel must have much higher values.

of course there is also 1 more solution, factorio physics where 1MJ = 1MWh

Joule is a SI-derived unit, MWh is not, so it should not be used in a game that only uses SI-derived/SI-units. Furthermore, the game "thinks" of all Energy in Joule, so displaying it in another unit would just be unnecessary conversion.

Your conversions to MWh is wrong; you can't just assume a 24h day. The power math and energy conversion in factorio works flawlessly unit wise. Here are some examples of it: https://wiki.factorio.com/Energy_and_Work and https://wiki.factorio.com/Tutorial:Applied_Power_Math

Bilka wrote:Joule is a SI-derived unit, MWh is not, so it should not be used in a game that only uses SI-derived/SI-units. Furthermore, the game "thinks" of all Energy in Joule, so displaying it in another unit would just be unnecessary conversion.

Your conversions to MWh is wrong; you can't just assume a 24h day. The power math and energy conversion in factorio works flawlessly unit wise. Here are some examples of it: https://wiki.factorio.com/Energy_and_Work and https://wiki.factorio.com/Tutorial:Applied_Power_Math

i understand what you saying, but then boiler consumption should be in in joules and not watts, also it's rather confusing, that calculations for conversion between energy and power are done against realtime seconds, while most operation are done against either ticks or ingame time.

fuell consumpotion should be on everything that consumes fuel either in units (but since you can have different fuels with different energy values, that will not work), or in energy units. having consumption of power producer in power units doesn't make sense anyways.

btw. that factorio wiki article just emphasise what i wrote at end. for some reason energy -> power conversion is not done in ingame time but in realtime ... it's easier to calculate, but doesn't fit the rest.

ticks are derived from real-time when performance allows 60 UPS, and everything else is derived from ticks, including fuel consumption
recipe/research base time is also stated in real-time seconds (5 in a tooltip = 5 seconds before various multipliers are applied)

7 minutes per 1 planet rotation (6.944 minutes between sunrises, a.k.a. "a day") is not very realistic, since centrifugal force would be greater than gravity, but we have a square-based pollution spread too, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

but 24 hours per alien planet rotation wouldn't add any realism either...
are any in-game processes other that the sunlight derived from the day cycle? is anything derived from elapsed OS-level "real" time as opposed to the ticks?

Are you using the in game clock mod to see the time of the day?

Other than what clocks we make from circuits and the day/night cycle, there is no indication of units of time passing in game. You’ve assumed that in game time is sped up up somehow, when that assumption is baseless. Physically the planet is a plane (neither sunrise/sunset times, nor sun direction alter with position on the map) so the only assumption is that the world it’s set on is artificial, a square world rather than a discworld. It seems equally safe to assume the light source is also artificial.

In fact since shadows don’t change during the day( the light direction is constant) that lends more evidence to the light source to be artificial.

There is no reason to assume that factorio is not in real time and 1 factorio second matches 1 RL second.

Aprillion wrote:7 minutes per 1 planet rotation (6.944 minutes between sunrises, a.k.a. "a day") is not very realistic, since centrifugal force would be greater than gravity, but we have a square-based pollution spread too, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You can't just assume standard gravity .

mexmer wrote:It has been bothering me for some time, but should not be fuel value in MWh?

fuel has energy value in MJ, i understand that generators energy production (generators) output is in MW, but boiler consumption is for some reason in MW, although fuel value is in MJ. and seem to me that translation between MJ and boiler consumption is incorrect (mind 1MJ is roughly 0.00028MWh. with current length of factorio day, and assuming 24hr day, boiler at 50% usage witll burn trough solid fuel cube in less than 1sec.

to produce 1MWh, you will need roughly 4000 MJ worth fuel eg. in 20 sec (roughly 1 hr in factorio time), you will need to feed boiler 160 cubes of solid fuel, and that is assuming 100% (eg. lossless) utilization.

So there is either mistake in boiler consumption units, but then you will have literal perpetuum mobile (3.8MJ will translate into 0.0014MW intake, and production of steam worth of 3.6MW of energy - 1 boiler can feed 2 generators, but has only 50% effectivity)
Or fuel value is not MJ, but MWh. othewise fuel must have much higher values.

of course there is also 1 more solution, factorio physics where 1MJ = 1MWh

1MJ = 1MWs, by definition (1W = 1J per second)

So, a solid fuel cube is 25MJ. A boiler consumes 3.6MW, or 3.6MJ/s. So, a boiler need a solid fuel cube every 25/3.6=6.9 seconds, or a coal every 8/3.6=2.22.

i understand what you saying, but then boiler consumption should be in in joules and not watts, also it's rather confusing, that calculations for conversion between energy and power are done against realtime seconds, while most operation are done against either ticks or ingame time.

A watt is a joule per second, so it makes sure to put fuel value at joules, but fuel consumption in watts. Essentially, fuel consumption is in joules/second, but the more convential name for that is a watt. Also, I'm pretty sure the conversions are done in ingame seconds, which are 60 ticks. I don't think fuel consumption per tick goes up if UPS goes down