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 12W while turned on. A Radar uses 300kW while active - equivalent to 25 000 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.

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.

Chunk

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